In Black and White
But take a good look at this ancient quotation spoken nearly 1950 years ago: "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved."
The speaker was Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He was talking to a group of His disciples who had just asked Him: "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?"
Those words of Jesus — "there should no flesh be saved" — could not have been understood before 1945 and the advent of the atomic age! This is a biblical description of a time so unprecedented, so unparalleled in the entirety of human civilization, that unless there was some type of supernatural intervention there wouldn't be a man, woman or child left on the face of this round earth.
You just read the quotation with your own eyes in black and white. If you don't believe me, pick up almost any translation of the Bible and open it to the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew.
But let's return to the editorial by David Lawrence from which I quoted earlier:
"But we shall miss the entire significance of the new discoveries [the atomic bomb] if we do not apply a spiritual interpretation. It is man and not God who must assume responsibility for this devilish weapon. Perhaps He is reminding us all that man-made weapons can, if their use is unrestrained, destroy civilization, and that man still has the chance to choose between the destructive and constructive use of the findings of science."
Jesus Christ was nearly 2,000 years ahead of David Lawrence, who was well ahead of his time, back in 1945. Christ foretold a time in human history when no one would be left alive if He didn't intervene in this world's affairs and cut the days short. He was way ahead of the movie On the Beach. He was way ahead of science fiction novels about the annihilation of humanity. Jesus knew, two thousand years in advance, that humankind would be fast asleep on a gigantic bomb — with a slow-burning fuse!
He further predicted: "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom [wars]: and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven . . . And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity . . ." (Luke 21:10, 11, 25).
Jesus described our fearsome days. He foretold the chaos among nations, the increasing natural calamities, the impending nuclear holocaust.
We live in a time when the fulfillment of the major prophecies of the Bible is in the immediate offing. We don't like to acknowledge that. We always like to think that history is going along pretty much as always; that we're in the middle of history. But our nuclear-armed age is different.
We are told that the UN is "the world's last hope for peace." That was its reason for being created out of the ashes of World War II. But what a shaky hope it is proving to be! The UN has degenerated into a forum for puny nations to attack the United States and the rest of the free world and all we hold dear. What a paradox! The world's last hope for peace has become an instrument for nations to berate one another like squabbling children!
The uneasy stalemate between "the war that cannot be fought and the peace that cannot be achieved" cannot last much longer.
But how does all this information help you? What can you possibly do about it?
What Should You Do?
What possible recourse do you, as a private citizen or subject of whatever nation, really have? How can you cope with this. mind bending nuclear age? What are your chances of survival? What are the options left open to you?
Building private civil defense shelters seems pretty impractical in this day and age.”Escaping" to the mountains or the desert would probably only bring you an early death from exposure. Is there no way out of the nuclear dilemma?
Here is some good news! You are not going to live in a world like today's — under the shadow of the bomb — very much longer. A new world is going to come soon — a world of peace and genuine cooperation among the nations; a world where our young people will never again be sacrificed in senseless wars.
But, before that, a time of great suffering and tribulation is coming. Each one of us needs to watch carefully (Luke 21:36) what is happening in the world so we know where we stand. The good news is some are going to escape and live on into the wonderful world tomorrow!
Your only real recourse is to do personally what this world's governments refuse to do. Trust God! Jesus said: "Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man." Are you willing to do that?
Personally, I am. But, in the meantime, every night following a busy day in this great Work of warning our peoples, I curl up and go to sleep — on a great big nuclear-tipped bomb. I only hope that somehow we can prevent the stupid thing from going off!